KATTUS
Vienna's Oldest Sparkling Wine Producer Since 1857
1. Identity & Presence
KATTUS is Vienna's oldest sparkling wine producer and one of the city's enduring family businesses. Founded in 1857, the house has shaped Viennese sparkling wine culture across six generations and today remains closely tied to the identity of the city itself. At its home in Döbling, Vienna's 19th district, KATTUS continues to refine its sparkling wines in Vienna's only Sektkellerei. Here, craftsmanship, maturation, and Viennese hospitality remain inseparable from the character of the house. Since 2021, the company has been led by Johannes Kattus V together with his brother-in-law Dr. Maximilian Nimmervoll, continuing a family lineage that has guided the business for more than 160 years. The company can be reached via www.kattus.at , at +43 1 368 22 55 , or via office@kattus.at .
2. The Origin Story & Key Figures
The story of KATTUS does not begin in a vineyard, but in the heart of imperial Vienna. In 1857, Johann Kattus I founded a delicatessen business that soon became synonymous with luxury and quality. His instinct for exceptional products proved remarkable. Within a few years, he had become Europe's largest caviar merchant, supplying both the Austrian Imperial Court and the Prussian nobility. His success earned KATTUS the title of k.u.k. Hoflieferant and laid the foundation for a family enterprise that remains in family ownership to this day.
The decisive chapter began with his son, Johann Nepomuk Kattus II. During a stay in Champagne, he learned the art of traditional bottle fermentation from Madame Clicquot herself, the legendary widow whose name remains inseparable from the history of sparkling wine. Inspired by what he encountered there, he returned to Vienna and founded the KATTUS Sektkellerei in Billrothstraße in 1890. More than a century later, the company remains at the same address in Döbling, Vienna's 19th district.
Subsequent generations continued to build on this foundation, developing KATTUS into one of Austria's defining names in Sekt while keeping the company in family hands. Across changing markets, tastes, and historical ruptures, the house retained the same essential axis: Viennese origin, family stewardship, and the transformation of selected wines into sparkling wine of distinctive character.
3. The Core of the Craft
At the core of KATTUS lies the controlled transformation of wine into sparkling wine through method, time, and precision. The house works across several forms of sparkling wine production, from the Méthode Traditionelle, in which the second fermentation takes place in the bottle, to the Méthode Charmat in pressure tanks, and the Méthode Ancestrale used for its limited Pét Nat sparkling wines. This range gives KATTUS a broad technical vocabulary without reducing its work to technique alone.
The quality of the final product begins long before fermentation. KATTUS sources its base wines exclusively from long-standing partner estates in Austria's best wine growing regions, with each grape supplier selected according to strict criteria. For its KATTUS Spumante, the Glera grapes come from an Italian family business with which the company has worked for more than 70 years.
This continuity of sourcing is matched by careful control in the cellar. Decades of experience, internal laboratory analysis, external quality checks, and a highly qualified cellar master team ensure that no sparkling wine leaves the house unless it meets the company's own quality standards. In this sense, the craft of KATTUS is both technical and cultural: rooted in method, shaped by experience, and refined in Vienna.
4. Enduring Legacy & Resilience
For more than 165 years, KATTUS has occupied a place in Vienna's social, ceremonial, and cultural life that extends well beyond production. This was already visible during the imperial period. According to the company's own account, Emperor Franz Joseph I enjoyed a bottle of KATTUS Sekt every Sunday and, in 1898, awarded the house the title of k.u.k. Hoflieferant. Until the end of his life, the Emperor continued to receive personal deliveries from the Kattus family. Today, the Johann Kattus Sektkellerei still displays one of his personal sparkling wine glasses, a small object that quietly connects the house's present with its imperial past.
That continuity remains visible in the company's role today. KATTUS describes itself as a Viennese institution, rooted in the capital for more than 165 years and closely connected to its culture of enjoyment, hospitality, and public life. Its resilience lies not only in maintaining this identity, but in carrying it into changing contexts without losing its centre.
There is also a practical breadth behind the visible brand. Beyond its own sparkling wines, KATTUS has for decades acted as a production partner for winemakers, restaurateurs, and brands, supported by modern bottling facilities and an experienced cellar team. Through Johann1857, the family's dedicated distribution company, KATTUS continues its long tradition of brand stewardship and general import. In this way, the house has preserved the merchant intelligence of its origins while remaining anchored in the craft and culture of Viennese sparkling wine.
5. Vision for the Future
The future of KATTUS lies in the continued art of Veredelung: refinement, elevation, and cultivation understood as one practice. It means taking something already good, the grape, the base wine, the occasion, even the everyday moment, and bringing it into a more expressive, more complete form. The company's own philosophy, upGrape, gives this direction a contemporary expression. As a wordplay between upgrade and grape, it describes the house's core competence: lifting the best of the grape to another level through second fermentation, whether in the bottle or in the tank.
This philosophy also reflects KATTUS's relationship with its wine growing partners. The company sees itself as a link between the traditional vineyard craft of long-standing Austrian winemaker families and the art of creating something even more refined from their work. Many of these partnerships have existed for generations, some for more than a century. In this sense, the future of KATTUS begins not with novelty, but with deepened collaboration, careful sourcing, and the disciplined continuation of a craft shaped across generations.
The same idea extends beyond the cellar. Through the upGrape podcast, Johannes Kattus V and Dr. Maximilian Nimmervoll speak with innovators, heritage businesses, family enterprises, and visionaries who are similarly committed to quality, sustainability, and genuine skill. upGrape thus becomes more than a brand promise. It is an attitude: an invitation to refine the ordinary, while remaining rooted in Döbling, in Vienna, and in the craft of sparkling wine.